The Poet's Forge

LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Poet's Forge by Helen Hunt Jackson. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for November 20, 2011.

Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona dramatized the federal government's mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California and attracted considerable attention to her cause.

Fiske attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school run by Reverend J.S.C. Abbott in New York City. She was a classmate of the poet Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst. The two corresponded for the rest of their lives, but few of their letters have survived. ( Summary by Wikipedia )